Video Nasties – The Definitive Guide (2010)
First of all I think I’d best open this post with a disclaimer – if the title hadn’t tipped you off this review will feature some pretty graphic material in terms of links and clips so if you are of a nervous disposition consider yourself warned. An intriguing box set was released last year which is already considered indispensable by the local horror and cult movie crowd, Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide is a degenerate 3 DVD box set that aims to cover a unique period in UK film censorship, a stretch in the early Thatcherite 1980’s when we UK denizens were proud to have the morally pure Mary Whitehouse campaign ban other adults from seeing material she found offensive – what a unsanctimonius, unelitest and wonderful Christian she was – except of course she didn’t actually watch any of the movies and evidently had mastered some sort of celluloid telepathy. Under the aegis of the dreary sounding National Viewers & Listeners Association she persuaded Tory MP Graham Bright to introduce a private members bill to prosecute VHS and Betamax retailers whom stocked product that were deemed to have violated the dimensions of the Obscene Publications Act, thus ushering in a puritan witch-hunt aided and abetted by a morally repugnant and rabid right wing press. Whilst some things never change this era was quite different to the contemporary situation as the video market was not legally subject to the ratings of the British Board of Film Certification (BBFC) and the industry itself had not been enveloped by the mainstream studios, thus it was something of home entertainment wild west with new production companies mushrooming at a phenomenal rate to meet the demand of punters whom had eagerly seized upon the VHS home entertainment craze – it is estimated that 10,000 titles were issued over this five-year period alone.
On the first disk of this wicked product is the context setting documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape, a captivating and amusing trawl through this dark period of controlling repression, directed by Jake West the documentary features contributions from the filmmakers Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday), Christopher Smith (Severance, Black Death) and MP Graham Bright as well as rare archive footage featuring James Ferman (director of the BBFC 1975-1999) and contributions from the film critics Kim Newman and Derek Malcolm. Exploring the explosion of home video, the disintegration of civil liberties and the inception of draconian censorship measures, this was a strange chapter of British film history when schlockmeisters of the ilk of Umberto Lenzi and Jess Franco found themselves in an uncertain alliance with the indisputable artisans Dario Argento and Mario Bava, the moment where Graham Bright is seen condemning the depraving results that these films have on children and dogs -yes that’s right – dogs, (2:12) is comedy gold.
The second and third disks presents the 39 titles that were successfully prosecuted in UK courts and deemed liable to deprave and corrupt and the wider 33 titles that were initially banned, but then subsequently acquitted and removed from the prosecutors list. The best feature of these is that both discs can be viewed either as a non-stop trailer show, or with newly filmed introductions from a wide range of acclaimed media academics and notable genre journalists, providing a satisfying bank for your buck (disk 2 runs for four hours) and both are preceded by a brief introduction from cult horror presenter Emily Booth. The coverage veers from the tounge in cheek to the well observed, the talking heads certainly don’t hold any superfluous love for many of these movies which are at best inept and tediously constructed lowest common denominator material, but there are pearls amongst the swine if only from some hilariously outrageous fare such as Night Of The Bloody Apes and the infamous Snuff. Some of these films do sound offensive and as you’d imagine most of them are criminal in terms of their contributions to the art-form – the material contained within rarely matched the lurid and titillating imagery splashed across the VHS box covers – but they do hold some cultural cachet as products of their time, as period pieces of an era long gone, like many I find atrocities such as Fulci’s The New York Ripper fascinating for its vision of a contaminated, seedy Big Apple of the 1970’s, not for its horrible and incongruously bizarre serial killer slayings. It never fails to amuse me that the moral majority never fail to understand the phenomenon of ‘banning’ something not resulting in their desired conclusion, it’s an obvious but worthy point to note that anything banned immediately obtains an infectious cache, a desirability that the product would probably never have achieved. Like many cult film fans of a certain generation I have fond memories of congregating at a friends (or my) house, tactically waiting until parents were absent before firing up the likes of Driller Killer to a rapturous audience of similarly minded sickos, sometimes just the trailers and taglines alone were hilarious enough for me and my warped sense of humor.
Please ignore that soundtrack, it’s beyond my control. So in the interests of appealing (or appalling) film lists here is the itinerary of the films that were banned and those which were certified , I’ve bolded the ones I’ve seen and I have to say I’m quite disappointed in myself in only achieving a measly 33% of depravity, I may have to go on a trawl and see what else is available out there to bolster this tepid performance. I’ve also thrown in some full trailers for some of my personal favourites in terms of nervous nostalgia and particularly effective degradation;
1. Absurd (Aristide Massaccesi, Italy, 1981)
2. Anthropophagous the Beast (Aristide Massaccesi, Italy, 1980)
3. Axe (Frederick R. Friedel, 1977)
4. Beast in Heat, The (Luigi Batzella, Italy, 1976)
5. Blood Bath (Mario Bava, Italy, 1971) AKA Twitch Of The Death Nerve – great title eh?
6. Blood Feast (Herschell Gordon Lewis, USA, 1963)
7. Blood Rites (Andy Milligan, USA, 1967)
8. Bloody Moon (Jess Franco, West Germany, 1981)
9. Burning, The (Tony Maylam, USA, 1980)
10. Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, Italy/Spain, 1979)
11. Cannibal Ferox (Umberto Lenzi, Italy, 1981)
12. Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, Italy, 1979)
13. Cannibal Man, The (Eloy De La Iglesia, Spain, 1971)
14. Devil Hunter, The (Jess Franco, Spain/West Germany/France, 1980)
15. Don’t Go in the Woods… Alone! (James Bryan, USA, 1980)
16. Driller Killer, The (Abel Ferrara, USA, 1979)
17. Evilspeak (Eric Weston, USA, 1981)
18. Exposé (James Kenelm Clarke, Great Britain, 1975)
19. Faces of Death (Conan Le Cilaire, USA, 1979) SERIOUS WARNING FOR THAT LINK
20. Fight for Your Life (Robert A. Endelson, USA, 1977)
21. Forest of Fear (Charles McCrann, USA, 1979)
22. Frankenstein (Andy Warhol’s) (Paul Morrissey, Italy/France, 1973)
23. Gestapo’s Last Orgy, The (Cesare Canevari, Italy, 1976)
24. House by the Cemetery, The (Lucio Fulci, Italy, 1981)
25. House on the Edge of the Park (Ruggero Deodato, Italy, 1980)
26. I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, USA, 1978)
27. Island of Death (Nico Mastorakis, Greece, 1976)
28. Last House on the Left, The (Wes Craven, USA, 1972)
29. Love Camp 7 (Robert Lee Frost, USA, 1968)
30. Madhouse (Ovidio G. Assonitis, USA/Italy, 1981)
31. Mardi Gras Massacre (Jack Weis, USA, 1978)
32. Night of the Bloody Apes (René Cardona, Mexico, 1968)
33. Night of the Demon (James C. Wasson, USA, 1980)
34. Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (Romano Scavolini, USA, 1981)
35. Snuff (Michael Findlay, USA/Argentrina, 1976)
36. SS Experiment Camp (Sergio Garrone, Italy, 1976)
37. Tenebrae (Dario Argento, Italy, 1982)
38. Werewolf and the Yeti, The (Miguel I. Bonns, Spain, 1975)
39. Zombie Flesh-Eaters (Lucio Fulci, Italy, 1979)
The films that were not deemed to be obscene:
1. Beyond, The (Lucio Fulci, Italy, 1981)
2. Bogey Man, The (Ulli Lommel, USA, 1980)
3. Cannibal Terror (Allan W. Steeve, France/Spain, 1981)
4. Contamination (Luigi Cozzi, Italy/West Germany, 1980)
5. Dead & Buried (Gary A. Sherman, USA, 1981)
6. Death Trap (Tobe Hooper, USA, 1976)
7. Deep River Savages (Umberto Lenzi, Italy/Thailand, 1972)
8. Delirium (Peter Maris, USA, 1980)
9. Don’t Go in the House (Joseph Ellison, USA, 1979)
10. Don’t Go Near the Park (Lawrence D. Foldes, USA, 1979)
11. Don’t Look in the Basement (S. F. Brownrigg, USA, 1973)
12. Evil Dead, The (Sam Raimi, USA, 1982)
13. Frozen Scream (Frank Roach, USA, 1981)
14. Funhouse, The (Tobe Hooper, USA, 1981)
15. Human Experiments (Gregory Goodell, USA, 1979)
16. I Miss You, Hugs & Kisses (Murray Markowitz, Canada, 1978)
17. Inferno (Dario Argento, Italy, 1980)
18. Killer Nun (Giulio Berruti, Italy, 1978)
19. Late Night Trains (Aldo Lado, Italy, 1974)
20. Living Dead, The (Jorge Grau, Spain/Italy, 1974)
21. Nightmare Maker (William Asher, USA, 1981)
22. Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, France/West Germany, 1981)
23. Pranks (Jeffrey Obrow & Stephen Carpenter, USA, 1981)
24. Prisoner of the Cannibal God (Sergio Martino, Italy, 1978) – yes, that’s Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress….
25. Revenge of the Bogey Man (Bruce Starr & Ulli Lommel, USA, 1982)
26. Slayer, The (J. S. Cardonem USA, 1981)
27. Terror Eyes (Kenneth Hughes, USA, 1980)
28. Toolbox Murders, The (Dennis Donnelly, USA, 1978)
29. Unhinged (Don Gronquist, USA, 1982)
30. Visiting Hours (Jean Claude Lord, Canada, 1981)
31. Witch Who Came from the Sea, The (Matt Cimber, USA, 1976)
32. Women Behind Bars (Jess Franco, France/Belgium, 1975)
33. Zombie Creeping Flesh (Bruno Mattei, Italy/Spain, 1981)
I love how some of these films have up to half a dozen alternative titles, according to some of the fans quoted on the second disk some of these abominations go for £500 to £1,000 on eBay, not bad for a redundant old technology like VHS. Finally here is a terrific compendium of video covers, there was one site that had 3,600 covers all the same page which was simply hilarious but alas it’s been taken down….
Minty's Menagerie 
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